Reviewed by James Karas
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the second play by William Shakespeare produced this season by the Stratford Festival. It is a hilarious success and has all the ingredients of a superb production.
We all have our personal views of what we want to see in a production of a play by the bard. I prefer fidelity to the text and creativity. Director Gaham Abbey is faithful to Shakespeare’s text without being slavish and he lets his imagination roam so that we get the best of creativity and some infidelity.
The production is done in the theatre-in-the-round Tom Patterson. The set consists of a large, white tree trunk that has fallen across the stage and a large globe hanging overhead. The tree stays in place and is very useful, but the globe turns and presents a kaleidoscope of colours. There is a rich array of lights and projections for the floor and the stage in general.
As everyone knows, Midsummer has four sets of lovers. The first is King Theseus and Hippolyta who are about to get married and impatiently wait for their wedding night. Then we have the fairies King Oberon and Queen Titania who are already married but are having a serious tiff over the possession of a child. Oberon will punish her by making her fall in love with the first thing that she sees on waking up which turns out to be an “ass”.
The real fun is with the young Athenians, Lysander (Jordin Hall) and Hermia (Vivien Endicott-Douglas), who run away from Athens and are followed by Demetrius (Thomas Duplessie) who also loves Hermia and Helena (Jessica B. Hill) who loves Demetrius. Puck magically but mistakenly induces Lysander to fall madly in love with Helena, reject Hermia and cause war to be declared among the lovers.
The funniest part of the play is the entertainment prepared by the town tradesmen, the “mechanicals” for Theseus’ wedding. They put on Pyramus and Thisbe, the tragic comedy of the lovers of Roman mythology.
Oberon has magical powers and Puck carries out his orers. There are fairies accompanying Titania and Oberon and the explanation for everything may lie in the title of the play.
Let me praise fine acting. The mechanicals are hilarious individually and as an ensemble. A couple of male roles are played very well by women: Quince is played by Sarah Dodd and Snout is played by Sara-Jeanne Hosie with wonderful results. The effervescent Bottom is played by the effervescent Michael Spencer-Davis. Michael Man plays Starveling and the piano. Yes, they have music accompaniment for their great production. Aaron Krohn is Francis Flute and Thisbe; Steven Hao is Snug and the Lion and with the fast-moving and hilarious skit I can’t recall all the double roles played by all.
Abbey has molded them into a comic ensemble that had the audience in the palm of their hands laughing,
The young lovers’ scenes are choreographed as much as they are directed. The men challenge each other to fight; the young women engage in a barrage of angry insults. Helena is taller than Hermia and the latter calls her a painted Maypole. It is all delightful and an outpouring of poetry that its words are converted into music.
Andre Sills as Oberon and Sara Topham as Titania are superb and they develop from a bickering pair to a loving family. In this version the little boy that Oberon demands from Titania is in fact a lively little girl played with gusto by Vivienne Abbey. Now the fairies become a family instead of a feuding duo. Marvelous touch.
Evan Buliung as Theseus and Ijeoma Emesowum as Hippolyta along with Tim Campbell as Egeus, Hermia’s father, play relatively minor roles. A waste of talent? They form the bookends of the play and the first two have a wonderful wedding thanks to the reconciliation of all and the performance of the mechanicals.
Mike Nadajewski as Puck is fast on his feet and his tongue. Even better, he is not afraid to engage the audience and get applause and laughter because he can do it. Wonderful performance.
The production gains a great deal from Lorenzo Savoini’s set design, Kevin Lamotte’s motley lighting design and the projection and video designs by Normal Studio. Joshua Quinlan’s costume designs provide tuxedos for the aristocratic men, long gowns for the ladies and more colourful attire for the fairies. The mechanicals wear simple workers’ clothes. All work very well.
The production opens with fairies jumping out of the stage floors and singing something that I did not get. The play itself opens with Theseus and Hippolyta, and I have no idea what Abbey had in mind with the additional scene. I may add that some of the actors had little idea of the intonation of iambic pentameters, but I enjoyed the production so much that I will leave it at that.
Quibbling aside, this is an outstanding
production.
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William
Shakespeare, produced in collaboration with Groundling Theatre, opened on May 27, and will run in repertory
until September 26, 2026, at the
Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, Ont.
James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto
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